How the Harry Dunn Case Reveals Flaws in Diplomatic Immunity
In August 2019, Harry Dunn, a 19-year-old from the United Kingdom, was killed when his motorcycle collided with a car driven by Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a U.S. diplomat who was based at RAF Croughton, a United States Air Force communications station in Northamptonshire, England. It was outside this station that the collision happened. Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road, and recent reports claim that she could have been distracted by her phone at the time of the crash.
In the U.K. this crime is categorized as causing death by dangerous driving, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in custody. After the emergency services arrived at the scene of the accident, police told Sacoolas to not leave the country, so that the correct legal proceedings could commence, instead, she fled the country and has remained in the U.S. ever since.
As the wife of a diplomat, Sacoolas claimed diplomatic immunity and has been using that as a shield against justice since her return to the U.S. For this reason, the American government has refused to extradite her, slowing down the progress of gaining justice for Harry. Another suggestion as to why the U.S. government has been so reluctant to send Sacoolas back to the U.K. is that she was allegedly a CIA agent working as a senior spy at the time of the incident and therefore entitled to diplomatic immunity in her own right, rather than just as a spouse.
Justice is still needed for Harry Dunn. (JUSTICE4HARRY19)
Diplomatic immunity in the U.K. was a premise set out in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations in 1961 and incorporated into domestic law by the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964. The Vienna Convention states that a person undertaking a diplomatic role abroad “shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention.” These privileges were set out with the belief that “an international convention on diplomatic intercourse, privileges and immunities would contribute to the development of friendly relations among nations, irrespective of their differing constitutional and social systems,” but this issue concerning Harry Dunn and Anne Sacoolas has put a lot of stress on the relationship between the U.K. and the U.S.
Although the idea of diplomatic immunity is widely accepted and entrenched in society, cases like these raise doubts about the morality of such privileges. If anybody can get away with causing the death of an innocent person, surely the loophole through which that person evaded prosecution should be re-evaluated. Since Dunn’s death, the U.S. and the U.K. have agreed to amend the laws to ensure that family members of diplomats do not enjoy a higher level of protection, but it is not enough to ensure something like this does not happen again.
Until the legal privileges enjoyed by diplomats are restricted, there is nothing to say that further perversions of the course of justice will not take place. Of course, any policy amendment of this gravity would take an extended length of time and would face opposition both at home and from abroad. If the U.K. can even claim to care about justice for Harry Dunn’s family, it is something that needs to be seriously considered.
